Gold and Beautiful

I totally share Woody Allen's love of beautiful cities. First New York, then Paris and now Rome. Definitely makes me want to live in these cities. Thoroughly enjoyed "To Rome With Love".  #perpetualfanofWoodyAllen

Today was the last day of classes and as students left the classroom, many of them thanked me. One girl stopped by, said "Thank you" and then said "You are a woman. How are you so good at this?". I was not prepared for this. I am used to (quite a few) students saying "This is hard" and (few saying) "You make it look so easy", but not this! I have thought very hard about how computing is done. That's my job. But I have never thought about the gender connection..... in anything, let alone computing. What has problem solving skills got to do with gender? What has (almost) anything got to to do with gender? I guess I will never understand. I have read the research, but I cannot relate to it. And I think I should thank my parents for it. Thank you mom and dad.... for never saying "because you are a girl".

I don't really watch as many movies these days as I used to. Growing up I was a huge Bollywood fan. I still love the bright clothes, the singing and the dancing. I hate the action movies and the melodrama. I started watching English movies much later in life, when I was in engineering college. I enjoy commercial movies and indie movies equally. I agree that not all Hindi movies are great, but I have a huge problem with people who make categorical statements that all Hindi movies are bad. I knew people who proudly said "I don't watch Hindi movies, only English" (with the same pride they (Maharashtrians!!) said "I can't read Marathi". Another post on that later.). Here's the thing. I agree that most Hindi movies are not worth watching, but some are. Also, Hollywood also dishes out tons of crap every year and they spend much more $$$ creating that crap than Bollywood can even think of. So, here's my point: If "Nacho Libre" is funny, then

" Every lawyer at least once in every case feels himself crossing a line he doesn't really mean to cross. It just happens. And if you cross it enough times, it disappears forever. " -- Rudy Baylor in John Grisham's The Rainmaker.

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July celebration.

Although I am not as big a fan of D.C. as I am of San Francisco, both my trips to D.C. have been interesting. Not to mention the amazing Ethiopian food available there. Last time when we went in Fall we participated in the Insanity Rally organized by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. This time the family reunion made it special. The heat was a torture though. A good decision we made was to book the hop-on hop-off tour. The bad decision was sightseeing in the day time. The hop-on hop-off tour is only available from 9am - 6pm, so there weren't many options. Unless you want to do a 3 hr night tour. I would have liked the night tour if it was also a hop-on hop-off tour. But the idea of a time restricted tour did not appeal to us. If you can, I highly recommend touring the city at late evening and night. Leave the daytime for museums, which are plenty and free. Even though the city is full of free museums and monuments, the private museums are also worth a look. Day 1: National

मराठी माणसाला निखळ प्रशंसा करणं जरा जडच जातं वाटतं .  "स्वयंपाक चांगला झालाय" असं म्हणणं बरोबर नाही वाटत. त्यापेक्षा "मागच्या वेळेपेक्षा जेवण खूप छान झालंय" असं बोलणं जास्त appropriate वाटतं. मैत्रिणीच्या मुलीला 94% मार्क मिळाल्याचं ऐकलं कि आपल्या मुलाला 10 वर्षांपूर्वी कसे छान मार्क मिळाले होते आणि त्याने किती कष्ट केले होते हे बोलून दाखवायला आवडते. जे आपण कर्माने कमावतो ते आपण शब्दाने गमावतो. 

We had an opportunity to watch "Charchaughi" today. This is an amazing Marathi play, probably 18 years old and was put together by a few local artists today in Atlanta. They did a pretty good job with it. I was probably in my 12th grade or first year of engineering when I first saw the play. There were a few things that I remember about the play. I remember that it was progressive. Maybe it was controversial/shocking, but I think Marathi plays cannot be compared to Marathi cinema or to Bollywood. It caters to a niche audience that I want to say categorized the play as progressive and not sensational (at least I hope they did). I remember that Deepa Lagoo did an amazing job (I can't believe that I went backstage and told her that she was great in the play. Of course she was great. She didn't need my stamp!!! But I had to say it). I also remember Vandana Gupte's long monologue in the play (where she is speaking on the phone). And finally I remember Alok's dial

On Day 4 we woke up at 4:00 am and were at Canyonlands National Park to take sunrise pictures by 5:45 am. Canyonlands national park is vast and Mesa arch in the park is a perfect place to take sunrise pictures. There were a few photographers there, but the arch is not huge and the place is quite small. As our canyoneering tour guide had told us most of the times you have to fight for your spot. Luckily we didn't have to do that. But it was extremely cold and the sun took it's own sweet time to rise. We were there for an hour and were freezing. We should have probably waited longer to take more shots, but it was impossible to stand there or move around to take pictures from different angles, in spite of dressing in warm clothes. The arch glows a nice shade of red in the sunlight.  That was the last arch we saw. People had told us that we would be arched out by the end of the trip, especially since we were spending so many days in one place. But we were not!! We loved every

On the morning of Day 3 we were back to Arches National Park for more hiking. We decided to cover the northern part of the park called Devil's Garden. Devil's garden trail is the longest of the maintained trails in the park and leads to quite a few arches. The hike to Landscape arch is pretty easy and it is a 2 mile hike (roundtrip). Landscape arch is the longest arch in the park and second longest in the world. The hike to Double O arch on the other hand is 4 miles roundtrip and pretty strenuous with many short elevation changes and rocky footing. As you climb the rocks, the views around are very pretty... if you like heights. This hike is a no-no for people who are afraid of heights. The hike and the final view from the arch are definitely worth a try. In the evening we decided to cover the Windows section to get some sunset shots. The Double arch is close to the Windows section and the hike is very short. The Windows section has 3 arches, the

We booked a canyoneering trip with Moab Adventure Center for day 2. We were at their office bright and early (7 am) and were driven to Negro Bill Canyon. There we hiked for about 30 minutes and reached a grotto.  This is where we tied ourselves to a rope and rappelled down a cliff 90 ft.high. Once we got out of the grotto the next rappel was at Morning Glory arch, from a 120 ft tall cliff. From here we hiked another 2.5 miles through the canyon before heading back. That evening we decided to go to Dead Horse Point State Park to take some sunset pictures. No hiking was involved!!! Interestingly this place is called Dead Horse Point because it was used by cowboys as a natural corral and when the corral was abandoned, the horses did not leave and died. The weather in Moab is typical desert weather, hot afternoons and cold nights. So bring a sweatshirt!!

The first stop in the park is Park Avenue trail. It is a 2 mile (roundtrip, not a loop) hike through tall rocks that resemble a city skyline, hence the name. You can also have someone pick you up at the other end of the trail if you don't want to hike 2 miles. If you don't want to hike, beautiful views of the park avenue rocks are also visible from the Courthouse Towers viewpoint, which was our next stop.  The Balanced Rock was our next stop. You can walk all around the rock at the bottom and get a sense of how huge it is and wonder how it is still up there. All the time that I was there I kept thinking that one day it's going to fall and hopefully it won't be during the day time. While on one side you can see all these rocks as you go in the park, on the other side you can also see beautiful snow-capped mountains. The next stop is Fiery Furnace viewpoint, which was rather disappointing. I had seen some really nice pictures of fiery furnac